Industrial coffee grinders have been well known for a number of years. Coffee grinders frequently comprised one or more coffee grinding sections which may be stacked above a mixer. The mixer, which may comprise a screw conveyor, blends and conveys the coffee through a screw conveyor section to a discharge section.
Industrial coffee grinder mixer assemblies are frequently intended to be used to agitate and blend coffee to an increased bulk density level so that the ground coffee can be fit into a given amount of volume. This might be useful for products such as pods, capsules, and cans with smaller volume metric dimensions than standard. The present inventor recognized that it would be an advantage to provide a grinder mixer machine and method for producing high density coffee which could be adjusted to meet the specific requirements of downstream packaging.
As shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,786,001, it is known to provide paddles within a coffee mixer, where the paddles extend from a rotatable mixer shaft. The paddles include a paddle arm fixed at one end to the mixing shaft and a paddle member extending perpendicularly from the paddle arm at an end of the paddle arm opposite the mixing shaft so that the paddles are a substantially T-shape.
The present inventor recognized that the paddles of the prior art mixers encounter a limit in the coffee density that can be imparted by the use of paddle mixing without creating excessive heat, which can over roast the coffee. The inventor recognized the paddles of the prior art mixers imparted unnecessary drag on the mixing motor during operation.
The present inventor recognized that, it would be desirable to provide a coffee densifier that produced a higher density coffee with less energy. The present inventor recognized that it would be desirable to provide a coffee densifier that is capable of producing coffee having a coffee density higher than that achievable by prior art paddle mixers.
Further the present inventor has recognized it would be desirable to provide an automatically control system for controlling the resulting coffee density being processed through a coffee densifier so as to maintain a consistent coffee density in the coffee exiting the densifier.